The Sudbury Wolves' head coach is sure his team has more than it showed in a 4-1 loss to the Brampton Battalion in Thursday's first game of their OHL Eastern Conference quarter-final.

"We can all be better, and that's a good thing, because I sure didn't love us tonight," Cull said.

Matt Schmalz was the lone goal scorer for Sudbury, which started slow and didn't generate many chances until after Brampton had built a commanding lead.

"I think we had a lot of eyes-wide- open guys in the first," said Cull, whose team fell victim to Brampton's vaunted shutdown game early and was outshot 10-3 in the opening period.

"And then to get down early, I think some of the guys got down a bit themselves. What we have to work on is obvious -- we need to be better offensively, but the big thing is that desperation finally kicked in the third and we had a lot of guys who were lacking experience, but now they've got at least one game of experience and hopefully they understand that you have to play with that desperation from the start of the first shift and do it throughout the game."

Sudbury goaltender Franky Palazzese was solid in stopping 23 of 27 shots and made some big saves, but just as in his three other losses to Brampton this season, he was supported by only one Wolves goal.

"I'm firm in saying there were no surprises tonight," Cull said. "Brampton came out and played as we expected them to and we did get opportunities off some things we discussed, but we have to keep doing those things and find a way, to a person, to a man, as players, to adjust. We need to be willing to play with that desperation and be willing to pay that ultimate price. We have one loss now, one X, so we need to find a way to put some checks in the box."

Matt MacLeod put the Battalion on the board with a power-play goal at 3:20 of the first, jamming the puck home as Palazzese tried to cover it.

Barclay Goodrow made it 2- 0 at 0:41 of the second, after Michael Kantor lost the puck in water on the freshly resurfaced ice, before Dylan Blujus kept Brampton perfect on the power play at 18:03 with a shot through traffic that Palazzese may not have seen.

Sudbury finally struck back at 2:05 of the third, when Dominik Kubalik made a good play to find linemate Dominik Kahun, who fired a shot that Brampton netminder Matej Machovsky stopped, but Schmalz pounced on the rebound to score his first OHL playoff goal and cut Brampton's lead to 3-1.

The line of Schmalz, Kahun and was one of the Wolves' best on Thursday, generating offence on a night when it was hard to come by.

A delayed penalty call against Wolves captain Kantor gave the Battalion and opportunity to pull Machovsky for an extra attacker and the home side scored on a shot by Francis Menard at 7:33.

Palazzese made a good save on the initial shot by Goodrow, but Menard was there to bury the rebound.

Sudbury had Palazzese out of his net with about a minute left in the contest, icing an extra attacker, but any chance the Wolves had to chip at the Brampton lead was taken away seconds later, when Kantor was called for spearing.

The Wolves outshot the Battalion 8-5 in the final frame, but the hosts held a 27-18 edge overall.

Game 2 of the series is also in Brampton, Sunday at 2 p.m.

Cull doesn't mind having extra time to prepare, to go over video and to practise, but reiterated his belief that a win Sunday will come down to more than X's and O's.

"It's that will to compete, to pay the price," Cull said. "We have a recipe and it does work, we just have to do it, over and over again, and we have to do it better than them. That's what it boils down to."

The series swings to Sudbury for Game 3, March 26, and Game 4, March 28, both at 7:30 p.m.

If necessary, Game 5 is in Brampton, March 29 at 7:30 p.m., Game 6 is in Sudbury, April 1 at 7:30 p.m. and Game 7 is in Brampton, April 2 at 7 p.m.